wfn.org | Women Prepare to Tell Churches

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

18-March-1998 
98091 
 
    Women Prepare to Tell Churches 
    to Take More Action to Halt Violence 
 
    by Edmund Doogue 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA-As the Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women reaches 
its end, many Christian women around the world believe that churches have 
not taken enough action to halt 
violence against women. 
 
    "Women feel that the issue has sometimes been trivialized or even 
justified using theology," Aruna Gnanadason, head of the World Council of 
Churches' (WCC) women's desk, told ENI this week. 
 
    Because of women's concerns, churches are likely to be called on to 
denounce violence against women, inside and outside the church, at the 
WCC's Eighth Assembly in Harare in 
December. 
 
    The Assembly will take place in the Zimbabwean capital almost 
immediately after a major festival (Nov. 27-30) celebrating the end of the 
Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women. 
 
    The 10-year program was established by the WCC in 1988 to challenge 
churches to examine their structures, teachings and practices as they 
relate to women, and to make a commitment to the full participation of 
women. 
 
    The program, overseen by the WCC's women's desk in Geneva, focused on 
several issues affecting women: their participation in the work and life of 
the churches, violence against women in church and society, global economic 
injustice, and racism. 
 
    A draft document, "Women's Challenges into the 21st Century," to be 
discussed at the "Decade Festival" in Harare in November, calls for the 
churches to continue the work of the Ecumenical Decade, including action to 
halt violence against women.  The document, after discussion at the 
festival, at which up to 1,200 people, including 100 men, are expected, 
will then be sent to the WCC Assembly for action.  The Ecumenical Decade 
will also be the subject of a plenary session during the Assembly. 
 
    Gnanadason told ENI that the festival would celebrate women's 
achievements during the decade.  "It's women who've kept it going," she 
said.  Women also needed to ensure that the decade's intentions were not 
forgotten now that it was reaching its end. 
 
    "Women are angry that now they may be left high and dry," she said. 
"All the decade was able to do was to puncture the balloon.  Some women 
have already called for another decade.  The document was intended to give 
churches practical advice to ensure the work continued," she said. 
 
    Gnanadason has overseen the decade's work since she joined the WCC 
women's desk in 1991.  Before that she was on a WCC committee which 
supported the establishment of the decade by her predecessor on the WCC 
women's desk, Anna Karin Hammar, a Swedish Lutheran pastor. 
 
    Hammar had been inspired by the spontaneous remark of an African bishop 
who said that after the United Nations' Decade for Women (1975-1985), the 
churches needed a decade on the same theme. 
 
    "In terms of women, the decade came at a very important moment," 
Gnanadason said, adding that in many parts of the world "there was a 
growing women's movement [in the churches], but it often seemed to be a 
case of women simply asking for things.  The decade provided a theological 
basis.  The decade has clearly been a success.  It has strengthened global 
solidarity with women.  Women have realized that the issues they are 
raising are global issues." 
 
    Action to halt violence against women has been one of the most 
controversial aspects of the Ecumenical Decade.  From 1994 to 1997, the WCC 
organized team visits -- known as "living letters" - to almost all its 
330-plus member churches around the world to discuss the aims of the 
decade and listen to local church people, especially women. 
 
    According to Gnanadason, the teams discovered that violence against 
women, including among Christians, was "widespread, in every continent, in 
every country. ... The decade allowed women to speak about it openly, and 
that included sexual abuse by clergy.  This caused some discomfort in the 
churches because for them it was like hanging out one's dirty washing in 
public. And this gave rise to attempts to justify the violence, as a part 
of the local culture or theology.  And there were also denials, refusal to 
accept that it was taking place. 
 
    "The decade has brought this issue into the open, for both the churches 
and the World Council of Churches.  Women are not going to stop speaking 
about it.  It's a very serious matter, and churches have a huge moral 
responsibility." 
 
    Gnanadason told ENI that the decade had helped women in many different 
ways.  In India, her own country, for example, the decade had helped push 
churches to challenge the state over the "personal laws," which 
discriminate severely against women on issues like inheritance, property 
and marriage.  The laws, framed by the British a century ago, have been 
challenged by the  women's movement because they were mainly intended to 
protect British soldiers. 
 
    In many countries, like Norway, the Netherlands, the United States, 
Canada and Australia, churches had been pushed by the decade to change 
their own internal regulations so that there were methods of discouraging 
and dealing with sexual harassment within the church. 
 
    In Africa and the Pacific the decade had helped churches to talk openly 
about domestic violence and the rights of the girl child. 
 
    Gnanadason said sometimes churches had reacted to the decade 
negatively, saying that economic crisis or even the church's survival, for 
example, must have precedence.  Others had questioned why the WCC was 
organizing team visits for an issue like the decade rather than for 
some other reason.  But the visits had been widely welcomed as means of 
contact with the churches. 
 
    As the decade reaches its end, Gnanadason warned that it would be wrong 
to see the initiative as "a women's decade. ... It wasn't, it was the 
churches' decade. 
 
    "The end of the decade must not sound like the ending of the agenda," 
she said.   "Women all over the world feel it's a beginning.  The issues 
have been exposed.  Now action must be taken." 

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